Ukraine sends uranium to Russia to enrich it and consequently produce nuclear fuel

The International Uranium Enrichment Centre (IUEC) plans to sign a contract with Ukrainian partners to supply uranium stock material from Ukraine to Russia. Director General of the Centre Alexei Lebedev said this in an interview with TASS.

“Currently, we are negotiating technical details of the deal. Because the supplies are usually delivered in the second half of the year, we expect the contract to be signed in spring”, Lebedev said, adding that in 2017, IUEC plans to negotiate on the agreement to align supplies of enriched uranium to nuclear power plants in Ukraine.

Earlier, in August this year, Ukraine’s Minister of Energy and Coal Production Volodymyr Demchyshyn said that starting from 2016, Kyiv would buy 5 of 13 nuclear fuel batches from Westinghouse, a US based nuclear power company offering nuclear products and services to utilities internationally. Currently, 12 of 13 batches are bought from the Russian Federation.